The other night I told my wife that I
might actually be a growth hacker. She
just looked at me and said, “You spend way too much time online.”

Sean
Ellis, who
is known for helping Dropbox grow in its early days, coined the
term "growth hacker"
in 2010. In a blog post,
he defined a growth hacker as "a person whose true north is growth.
Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable
growth." In April 2012 the idea of
growth hacking really took off when a blogger named Andrew Chen
wrote a piece called “Growth
hacker is the new VP Marketing.” Of course, now that CMO’s are expected to
have a technical background my CIO counterparts don’t find the “hacker”
reference particularly funny.

Is your true north pointed toward growth? Yeah, that’s what I thought … who’s isn’t? In one way or another we are all trying to
create growth with resources that are subject to being hacked or cut out
completely. In my mind, the term “bootstrap” works
just as well. Bootstrapping is often used
to describe situations of self-reliance.
It means to develop by effort with little or no assistance. In the world of marketing this often equates
to launching a new customer initiative with minimal capital or cash flow. The current anxiety over the global economy
suggests 2015 could be a bootstrapping year as chief executives, chairmen and
company presidents focus on our slow growth economy. That means CMO’s will have
plenty of opportunities to document their “how I bootstrapped the bear”
marketing stories.

In a
slow growth economy, one of the major reasons businesses go under is because
they run out of cash. Cash flow is the lifeblood of every business and in order
to keep the business healthy, cash needs to continue flowing; and slow growth can
be particularly hard-hitting for small businesses unless they have plenty of capital
to ride out the doldrums. In my blog
post “You Can Support Headcount and
Share of Voice on a Tight Budget” written during the 2008 economic
downturn I presented a high-level case study in which a small business was able
to increase qualified leads by 7 percent while cutting their marketing budget
by 24 percent. And the decrease in spend
was not the result of reducing headcount.
So, let me offer what I consider a business development “power triangle” that may
help you bootstrap your 2015 marketing plans.

1. Blog: I know; you’ve been blogging for years now. But you need to get more people motivated and
involved. One person creating one post a
month means you are far behind in the content-marketing arms race. Attention spans are short and quality
expectations are high. So, keep them
short and entertaining with relevant stories.
Focus on building trust, rapport and credibility. And remember, relationships are not developed
overnight. Think long-term, not every communication
needs to blast a “call-to-action.” You
can create focused content by leveraging your in-house subject matter experts to
provide material that supports each phase of your sales cycle. As always, make sure the content is search
engine-optimized so certain keywords are likely to be picked up in
industry-specific searches.

2. LinkedIn: I know; you’ve been on LinkedIn for years. But too many people in your organization
still consider LinkedIn as a resume tool that you only think about when you are
searching for a job. They don’t
understand that LinkedIn may very well be the best business development tool on
the planet. Help your organization
understand how adding blog posts, video, projects and presentations to their
profile helps increase their credibility.
The decision makers your sales force is trying to contact are reviewing
their profiles. If they don’t like what
they see, chances are they won’t be returning any phone calls or accepting any
meeting requests.

3. Twitter: I know; it’s been a month since you logged on and you still don’t
really see the value of Twitter as a business development tool. This element of the power triangle is where
most organizations will fall short. They
don’t understand the value of Twitter to help build and nurture a targeted
audience. And they haven’t figured out
how to use the platform in an integrated way to start conversations that
actually develop into business relationships.
At best they’re probably using Twitter merely to broadcast
product-focused messages. New social
employee advocacy applications can help.
So, renew your perspective on this application and build your audience.

By
integrating your social media platforms and content strategies you can create a
focused marketing program that can make a cost effective difference in both
your lead generation and lead nurturing programs. It will also help you
maintain your customer-focus while you’re doing everything possible to manage
your cash flow in a slow economy.

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